


POOF

by gardnerhill



Category: Calvin & Hobbes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7587511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some kids should really put their toys away when they’re done. Someone could find them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	POOF

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2016 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #25, **Trope Trainwreck!**

POOF

“Watson,” the emperor penguin said, craning her neck to look down her back at the tail and forward to gaze at the egg balanced on her feet. “I’m not entirely sure I am either awake or sane at the moment.”

The large red tomato wearing a bowler hat only glared at the flightless consulting detective. “At least you’re in three dimensions. I feel like bits of … well, electrons caught on a screen. Let’s try this again.”

The dial scrawled on the pasteboard box in wax-crayon under the word TRANSMOGRIFIER was a series of strange symbols – possibly this child’s invention as well. Holmes used her beak to turn the red pasteboard pointer held on with a paper-fastener to a new hieroglyph, and she and the large behatted tomato hopped into the box.

POOF

“That’s better!” The detective straightened the lapels of his smart tweeds, adjusted his deerstalker between his ears, and swished his tail. “Oh, confound it!” He looked up at Watson. And up, and up.

The doctor was human, if feeling a bit…inky…tall, muscular and broad-shouldered. He admired his dark brown skin, neat black beard and black leather jacket in the mirror of a nearby store window. “Oh, this is much better.” He arched an eyebrow at the New York-accented voice he’d just used.

The tweed-clad mouse scrambled back into the box. “Come along, Watson.”

“Must I?”

“And try not to step on me.”

Sighing, Watson gingerly settled his broad frame into the box. A Watson went with a Holmes; that was the one fixed point in this insanity.

POOF

Watson squealed something in Japanese, stared down at his sailor-suit dress, and looked over at the mass of tentacles spilling out of the box that – to be fair – resembled his friend from the navel up. Oh God no –

“ _Hitotsuzutsu_?” Watson suggested in a high-pitched voice, and batted his huge blue eyes.

“One at a time?” The octo-Holmes puffed at his pipe. Not yet.”

A new symbol. Back in the box.

POOF

“Damnation!” Watson yanked off his Stetson and flung it down next to his gator-skin doctor’s bag.

The handsome black horse with a silver blaze on his nose shook his head. “Losing your temper won’t fix this, old boy. At least this time we are both in the same milieu. We should indeed stay together.”

Lips pursed under his handlebar moustache, Doc Watson nodded once. He gave a new twist to the flimsy dial, set a boot to the stirrup and swung astride his friend. “Let’s try it this way.”

Horse and rider leaped into the box.

POOF

“Now I’m beginning to lose my patience, Watson,” said the rocking chair. The duck sitting atop it quacked in agreement.

POOF

The aspen and oak agreed to a breather, and spent a peaceful hour photosynthesizing in the afternoon sun by the transmogrifier before gracefully toppling together atop the box.

POOF

“All right, we’re both human men. But at what point does this start making sense?” queried the man wearing a thick greasepaint moustache, a pair of glasses, and waving a cigar. The curly-haired man sitting in front of an enormous harp only smiled and honked his horn.

POOF

A tuna in a blue scarf and a one-armed samurai.

POOF

A pipe and a pistol.

POOF

Two American doctors, one hobbling on a cane and swallowing Vicodin.

POOF

Two Korean women in modern dress.

POOF

An android and a blind engineer.

POOF

Two dogs.

POOF

“Stop, Holmes! Let us stop while we’re here!”

They were both Englishmen and bearing their own familiar features, but wearing farthingales and doublets and codpieces. Holmes’ pipe was now a long-stemmed one of white clay.

The detective peevishly adjusted his enormous neck-ruffle. “In a time when witchcraft and bodily humours was considered science and medicine? Where either of us could be burned for practicing our professions correctly?”

Watson stopped Holmes before he could get back into the wretched box. “Observe and deduce, my dear Holmes!”

Holmes blinked, and looked. They were in the same little yard off a house in a decent neighbourhood. The box was still there, rather crumpled and torn now from their use. But around them was their own Victorian world. He exhaled in relief. The nightmare’s end was in sight.

Watson continued. “We are quite ourselves again, and only wear the fashion of another time. All we need do is change our clothes when we return to Baker Street. OUR rooms in Baker Street, and not a post-box containing a one-eyed mouse in a poloneck and a hamster with glasses.”

“Our clothes.” Holmes looked at his friend’s trim moustache and goatee and shoulder-length brown hair, hefted his own shoulder-length black curls. “And a visit to the barber for us both.”

“And let us hope we never meet this beastly child.” Watson shuddered as they left the yard, heedless of the incredulous stares their Elizabethan outfits occasioned.

“A careless lad.” Holmes indicated the rag-toy tiger left sprawled on the grass near the box. “He doesn’t take care of his possessions very well.”


End file.
